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Gleanings

When incidents of police violence come to light, the usual defense is that we should not tarnish all the good cops just because of "a few bad apples." No one can argue with that. But what is usually implied in that phrase is that the "bad" officers' intentions are malevolent—that they are morally corrupt and racist.

For many people, going to work involves a lot of doing what the boss says. Worker cooperatives provide an alternative to this top-down model by extending ownership of a company to the employees, but there are ways to bring democracy into your workplace or organization without formally structuring yourself as a cooperative.

To have effective community conversations, it’s important to get as many different kinds of people involved as possible. A program that involves a broad cross-section of the community is more likely to benefit the community as a whole. And, having a diverse mix of participants helps make for lively and rewarding dialogue.

With over a trillion dollars in assets and more than 100 million members, it is clear that credit unions must play a pivotal part of any effective strategy aimed at bringing the co-op model to full scale in the American economy.

The Peer to Peer Foundation ran a brief summary of "Think Outside the Boss: Cooperative Alternatives to the Sharing Economy" ... a video recording of a panel discussion under that title held at the Solidarity Economy Civic Hall in NY City. The article on the P2P site was "Trebor Scholz et al on Cooperative Alternatives to the Sharing Economy" but I think we should remember this item by its original title.